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Talk:Enjolras/@comment-28001522-20170106025323
I noticed that there is a discussion started from 3 years about what would Enjolras have done if he had survived. Well, from reading the book, he would have been very upset not to die. He had reached the point where he wanted to die for his cause and hope that others would follow in his footsteps in the future. In his last great speech on the barricade, this is clear. It also says that he was in a state of "exteme melancholy", melancholy being the old word for depression. He was aware that all his dreams for a revival of the Great French Revolution (read his thoughts as he is walking along in the chapter, Enjolras and his Lieutenants) and the utopian new world that he hoped for had fallen to dust around him. He wanted to die but he wanted to go down fighting and take as many of the soldiers as he could down with him. Anyway, the National Guard at this stage wasn't interested in taking prisoners, just read the last paragraph in the chapter after Enjolras and Grantaire's deaths, they killed all the rebels left till there was silence. These massacres by the National Guard did happen. When the soldiers cornered him in the upper floor of the wineshop, he just wanted them to kill him. He had seen not only all his dreams turn to dust, but seen all his friends die around him. Hypothetically, if he was able to escape the slaughter, which some rebels on other barricades did, the police would have been looking for him as a barricade commander. A number of rebels particularly from the St Mery barricade went on trial. They weren't charged with treason, but I think insurrection. None were executed. A small number were sentenced to death, but the sentences were commuted to imprisonment on appeal. They already had good defence lawyers in France in those days, I think some of the lawyers must have been republican sympathisers, because both the rebels and their lawyers made lots of political statements at their trials. In France in those days there were separate parts of prisons for political prisoners (who got better conditions) and ordinary criminals. All the rebels were jailed as political prisoners. If they didn't die in jail from catching some nasty disease like TB or other infectious diseases, (they had prison hospitals but a lot of diseases were incurable in those days), they would only have served five years. In May 1837, King Louis-Phillipe (the king they were fighting against and wanted out), declared a Royal Amnesty for all political prisoners, especially those who fought in the June 1832 rebellion. Did he really think that they would stop wanting a republic just because he was nice to them and released them from jail? Of course, those who wanted a republic didn't and in the 1848 Revolution they got one and King Louis-Phillipe fled to England where he spent the rest of his days. So if Enjolras had survived (and not committed suicide), been arrested and put on trial and found guilty and jailed, he would only have served five years, before the King gave them all an Amnesty.